COGNITIVE THEORIES OF LEARNING

 Introduction
 Meaning of Cognition
 Information Processing Approach
 What is Information Processing?
 Memory systems
 Types of memory
 Meaning and causes of Forgetting
 Ways of promoting memory
 Introduction
 Cognitive learning theories re-emerged in 1960s, strongly
criticizing behavioral learning theories.
 Much on the work of Flavell, Atkinson, Schifrin, Siegler and

others

What is Cognition?
 Cognition, refers to‘the understanding, acquisition and processing
knowledge, or more loosely thought processes’ (Hamilton,
I ;1995:20).
 Cognitive learning theories explain ways by which human being

acquires and understands knowledge through thinking.

 Information Processing Approach
 Information Processing Approach is concerned with how:
◦ human being acquires, processes, retains and retrieves information.
◦ people remember and forget information.
 More studied areas are attention in memory formation, expansion of

memory capabilities and Stages of Information Processing (Passer

and Smith;2001:467).
 IP and Learning

 Related to learning, IP studies how the learner:

oacquires, processes, retains, retrieves and uses information in the
learning process; and
oremembers and forgets information.
 Knowledge of IP is important for teachers in order to promote

learners’ ability to remember information and enable them to learn

effectively.
 Concept of ‘Memory’ and its storage systems

 Memory: keeping facts or experiences in mind and be able to

retrieve it when needed.
 Three types of memory storage systems;

1. Sensory Memory;
2. Short Term Memory; and
3. Long Term Memory.
 THREE MEMORY SYSTEMS

This is based on the work of Atkinson and Schifrin (1968)


SENSORY MEMORY
The teacher must:
Senses of hearing, touching,
smelling, tasting and vision
Large amount of information
Temporary and brief
storage/short time stay
Attention and recognition
needed
Fading occurs when no
attention is paid
Promoting Sensory
Registration
present little information;
pause at every stage or step by
involving short time activities.
draw learners’ attention on important
information;
help learners use as many sense
organs as possible;
organize and link well previous and
new information or materials.
 SHORT TERM MEMORY
Information registered, attended and recognized enters the STM
Holds current information
Short time stay
Rehearsal is needed

Types Rehearsal
 Maintenance rehearsal (a mere repetition of a concept to be learnt so
as to remember it even not understanding its meaning).
 Elaborative rehearsal (a technique of thinking about the meaning rather
than repeating the concepts
 LONG TERM MEMORY
Information held in Short Term Memory is transferred in to Long
Term Memory.
Large capacity to store
Long time stay
Most information used is retrieved from LTM
Information can not be lost
Retrieval for STM
Information in LTM is retained for a long time and will never be
forgotten.
 Failure to retrieve may be due to failure to retain information in the

long term memory or unable to retrieve already available

information.
 Types of Memory

 Episodic, Semantic and Procedural.

 Episodic memory/images: pictorial representations like images of

personal experiences or events; what one did or saw.

 Semantic memory: facts and general knowledge; concepts,

principles, learning strategies or problem solving skills.

 Procedural memory: how to do things or how to perform

intellectual tasks; how to operate a computer or to build a house.

 Forgetting:
The loss of previously acquired material from memory (Elliott et
al;2000:283)
Why do we forget?

Information interference; mixed up of information, information is

pushed aside or inhibited by another information.
This happens when;
 two pieces of information appear to be similar or too much alike
and no cues to differentiate them.
 One piece of information is lost or confused with another because
of lack of sufficient learning.
  The interval is too short
 One piece of information has not been well understood

 Two types of Interference/Inhibition:

1. Retroactive inhibition
2. Proactive inhibition
• Proactive inhibition: failure to learn new information because is
interfered by previously learned information.
• Retroactive inhibition: failure to recall previously learned
information due to learning new information.
 Emotional state (fear, hate, sadness, lack of interest or
disappointment ) on a material, process, teacher or when doing an
action.
 Fatigue; It affects the work of sense organs, attention and
concentration, so, it is difficult to retrieve or retain information.
 Unorganized information; Organization facilitates the work of
the schema.
• Un-interrelated or sequentially illogical information is hard to

organize in a mental schema.

• No rehearsal: large amount of information, noise, some emotions or
lack of chance to rehearse.
• Encoding failure: the information has never been encoded so it has not
been transferred neither to STM nor to LTM.
• Motivated forgetting: bad, traumatic, shameful information are
intentionally repressed as they bring out bad feelings.
 Memory Strategies
Meaningful practices and using variety of visual aids that make learners
use many sense organs in learning.

Good organization and presentation of material. Facts and ideas that are
well organized can be easily understood and so easily put in memory.
Organization:
• Divide the information into parts
• Show how the parts are related
• Arrange the information according to their relationship
• Present them in sequence
• Teaching by association; using examples, real objects, illustrations,
pictures or models.
• Association provides memory cues. One thing stimulates remembering
of another.

Frequent revision and practices;

• Mass learning: Practice newly learned information intensely until it is
thoroughly learned.
• Distributed practice: For better retention, spread several shorter sessions
over a few days and guide students to practice a little each day through
home work or class work.
• Part learning: Breaking the long list of items into smaller list.
• Encourage learners to learn part of a thing separately.
• Over-learning: Continuous practice of the learned material beyond the
point of recall or initial learning.
• This will reinforce attention, concentration and rehearsal, and so, long
term retention.

• Motivation: promotes interest and feelings of need and meaningfulness

of a material.
• It promotes attention and focus
Primary and recent effects: give an outline in the beginning of the lesson
and summary at the end due to primary and recent effects of information.
• Primary information draws more attention to the learner while recent

information is not affected by intervening information.

Using elaborative rehearsal

• This helps in deeper information processing.

• Ask students to:

• explain the meaning of concepts at every step;

• infer he information or idea;

• interpret information;

• give examples.
The use of mnemonics: these are techniques for remembering.
• They provide cues that aid memory.
• They are used to form mental images to help remember associations.
• More about this, visit; https://www.learning assistance.com/2006

Types of mnemonics:
• Yodai mnemonic; each word in a piece of information to be

remembered is given another more familiar name.

• Peg word method: List of facts is linked with images; two- shoe,

three- tree, four-door,

• Initial letter strategies (acronym): make acronyms like BODMAS.
 REFERENCES
 Elliot et al (2000): Educational Psychology: Effective Teaching,
Effective Learning: Boston: McGraw Hill.

 Hamilton, I (1995) Dictionary of Cognitive Psychology. Methuen

 Passer, M & Smith, R (2001):Psychology: Frontiers and

Application. Boston: McGraw Hill.

 Slavin, R (1988): Educational Psychology: Theory into Practice.

Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

 Snowman, J. McCown & R. Biehler, R (2009): Psychology Applied

to Teaching (12th edition). Belmont: Wadsworth, Cengage

Learning.